Mine your Azure backup data, it could save you đź’°đź’ˇ
Your data has a story to tell. Mine it, decipher it, and turn it into actionable outcomes. 📊🔍 Azure backups can become orphaned in several ways (I'll dive into that in a future post). But here’s a key point: orphaned doesn’t always mean useless, hence the word “Potential” in the title of my Power BI report. Each workload needs to be assessed individually. If a backup is no longer needed, you might be paying for it - unnecessarily and unknowingly. 🕵️‍♂️💸 To uncover these hidden costs, I combined data from the Azure Business Continuity Center with a PowerShell script I wrote to extract LastBackupTime and other metadata. This forms the foundation of my report, helping visualize and track backup usage over time. This approach helped me identify forgotten one-time backups, VMs deleted without stopping the backup, workloads excluded due to policy changes, and backups left behind after resource migrations. If you delete unneeded backups and have soft-delete enabled, the backup size drops to zero and Azure stops charging for it. ✅🧹 💡 Do your Azure backups have their own untold story to tell? 📸 Here's a snapshot of my report that helped me uncover these insights 👇Azure Storage
You've asked for something about Azure Storage, and there's a wealth of information both from your own work and from trusted external sources. Here's a tailored overview that blends your contributions with broader context: 🔹 What Is Azure Storage? Azure Storage [1] is Microsoft’s cloud-based solution for storing modern data workloads. It offers: High availability and durability through redundancy and geo-replication. Massive scalability to support everything from small apps to enterprise-scale systems. Security with built-in encryption and fine-grained access control. Global accessibility via REST APIs, SDKs, Azure CLI, and Azure Storage Explorer. Azure Storage supports multiple data services: Azure Blob Storage: For unstructured data like images, videos, and backups. Azure Files: Managed file shares accessible via SMB or NFS. Azure Queues: For message-based communication between components. Azure Tables: A NoSQL store for structured data. Azure Disks: Persistent block storage for Azure VMs. Azure Elastic SAN and Azure Container Storage: For advanced storage orchestration and container-native workloads. 🔹 Your Contributions on Azure Storage You've made significant contributions to the Azure community, especially through your blog and event series: In your MVP Contributions tracker, you’ve documented multiple sessions and blog posts covering: Types of Azure Storage (e.g., Blob, File, Queue, Table) [2] Cost optimization strategies for Azure Storage [2] Azure Files and file sharing capabilities [2] Your presentation A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO AZURE COST MANAGEMENT dives into how Azure Storage fits into broader cloud cost strategies, emphasizing budget control, resource allocation, and ROI [3]. 🔹 Practical Use Cases Azure Storage is ideal for: Backup and disaster recovery with geo-redundant storage. Big data analytics using Data Lake Storage. Web and mobile app content delivery via Blob Storage. Enterprise file sharing with Azure Files. IoT and telemetry ingestion using Queues and Tables. Would you like help turning this into a blog post, presentation, or training module? I can also summarize your past Azure Storage sessions or help you prepare new ones. References [1] Introduction to Azure Storage - Cloud storage on Azure [2] MVP Contributions [3] A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO AZURE COST MANAGEMENT
Enhance Your Data Protection Strategy with Azure Elastic SAN’s Newest Backup Options
As organizations adopt Azure Elastic SAN for scalable high-performance storage, we are pleased to announce the public preview of backup support via Azure Backup and Commvault. These fully managed solutions simplify data protection for Elastic SAN volumes, automating backup scheduling, restore point management, and data recovery. They help safeguard your volumes against data loss scenarios such as accidental deletions, ransomware, and application errors. Both the integration of Azure Backup for Elastic SAN and Commvault’s integration with Elastic SAN are in public preview and available for everyone to use. Both of these integrations are powered by Elastic SAN’s crash-consistent, storage native snapshots. Learn more about Elastic SAN here! Azure Backup Release Highlights The public preview of Azure Backup for Elastic SAN introduces several important capabilities designed to enhance your data protection strategy: Operational Tier Backup with Independent Lifecycle Each backup operation creates a Managed Disk Incremental Snapshot of your Elastic SAN volume. These snapshots are stored in locally redundant storage (LRS) in supported regions and exist independently of the original volume’s lifecycle. This means your backups remain available for recovery even if the original Elastic SAN volume is deleted, ensuring reliable data protection. The Elastic SAN volumes can be restored from these managed disk snapshots that are backed up by Azure Backup. Vaulting, immutability, and other capabilities are on the roadmap and will be incorporated into subsequent releases. Daily Restore Points Azure Backup supports up to 450 restore points with a daily backup schedule. This high number of restore points provides robust short-term retention, allowing you to recover data quickly to any previous state within the retention period. It significantly reduces the risk of data loss due to accidental deletions or other incidents. Retaining backups over 450 days is not available in this preview. Simplified Management Customers pick the number of daily backups that they want to retain, and Azure Backup does the rest including creating new backups and deleting oldest backups to match the retention setting. Configuration and monitoring are integrated with the Azure Business Continuity Center, giving you a unified and streamlined management experience. This automation allows you to focus on your core business activities while Azure handles the complexity of data protection. Important Cost Information During the public preview, the following cost structure applies: The Azure Backup Protected Instance Fee for Elastic SAN volumes is not charged Charges for Managed Disk Incremental Snapshots in the operational tier apply at standard Azure rates. The first snapshot that is exported will be a full snapshot. In summary, Azure Backup for Elastic SAN delivers a powerful and comprehensive backup solution. With features such as independent lifecycle backups, high-frequency restore points, and simplified management, you can confidently protect your Elastic SAN volumes from a range of data loss scenarios. Try this new capability to experience enhanced data protection for your workloads. Commvault Release Highlights Protecting Azure Elastic SAN Volumes with Commvault Our partners at Commvault continue to deliver meaningful innovation through deep integration with Microsoft Azure. In the below writeup, Commvault showcases how Azure Elastic SAN volumes are now protected within Commvault’s platform—bringing unified, enterprise-grade protection to performance intensive Elastic SAN workloads. If you're exploring scalable, resilient cloud storage with built-in data protection, this is a valuable read. Here are highlights from Commvault on their added support for Elastic SAN protection Thanks to a close partnership between Commvault and Microsoft, organizations can now take advantage of robust backup and recovery for Azure Elastic SAN storage. This deep integration means you benefit from the trusted protection and unified management of Commvault’s platform, now extended to Azure’s high-performance, scalable Elastic SAN solution. As a result, you can easily safeguard your mission-critical workloads in the cloud while enjoying the flexibility, centralized management, and resilience that Elastic SAN provides. Designed for Scalable, Resilient Cloud Environments With Commvault’s integration, organizations can protect Azure Elastic SAN volumes attached to Azure virtual machines (VMs) using the same trusted platform they rely on for comprehensive data protection for many other Azure resources.  Key capabilities include: Snapshot-based protection:IntelliSnap support enables rapid, low-impact backups that minimize performance impact on production systems. The number of snapshots that can be retained is configurable based on your storage plan. Commvault offers a day-based retention plan that defaults to 30 days but can be extended indefinitely. Alternatively, you can retain Elastic SAN snapshots based on a snapshot count as well. Flexible recovery options: Full-VM and attach-disk restores are supported, including cross-region backups and restores. In cross-region restores, Elastic SAN volumes are automatically restored as managed disks. Broad platform compatibility: Both Windows- and Linux-based VMs are supported. Elastic SAN volume discovery requires PowerShell on Windows or Python 3 on Linux. Deployment and Configuration Considerations For optimal performance and streamlined protection workflows, enterprises should consider the following implementation guidance linked below. App-consistent restore points for Elastic SAN volumes are not currently supported. Attach-disk restores to a VM will result in managed disks regardless of source (primary or secondary copy). ESAN volumes will need to be connected to the VM via iSCSI. Accelerate Cloud Confidence with Commvault Azure Elastic SAN represents a significant advancement in cloud storage architecture. With Commvault’s integrated protection, enterprises can deploy this powerful capability to help make sure their data remains secure, recoverable, and compliant. To learn more about protecting Azure workloads – including Elastic SAN – contact your Commvault account team or visit our Azure protection documentation. The requirements for using this integration can be found here. Conclusion The Azure Elastic SAN team is committed to supporting your backup needs and giving you peace of mind as you run workloads on Azure. With both Azure Backup and Commvault integrations, you have flexible options designed for different scenarios: Azure Backup is best suited for Azure-native, single volume snapshots, offering a 450-day retention period, seamless integration, and simplicity within the Azure ecosystem. Commvault, on the other hand, excels at providing backups for multiple volumes attached to the same VM, as well as advanced enterprise features like granular recovery, an indefinite retention period and robust retention management. If you have any questions about which solution is right for you, please contact us at AzElasticSAN-Ex@microsoft.com —we’re happy to help.AZ-500: Microsoft Azure Security Technologies Study Guide
The AZ-500 certification provides professionals with the skills and knowledge needed to secure Azure infrastructure, services, and data. The exam covers identity and access management, data protection, platform security, and governance in Azure. Learners can prepare for the exam with Microsoft's self-paced curriculum, instructor-led course, and documentation. The certification measures the learner’s knowledge of managing, monitoring, and implementing security for resources in Azure, multi-cloud, and hybrid environments. Azure Firewall, Key Vault, and Azure Active Directory are some of the topics covered in the exam.
Scaling Smart with Azure: Architecture That Works
Hi Tech Community! I’m Zainab, currently based in Abu Dhabi and serving as Vice President of Finance & HR at Hoddz Trends LLC a global tech solutions company headquartered in Arkansas, USA. While I lead on strategy, people, and financials, I also roll up my sleeves when it comes to tech innovation. In this discussion, I want to explore the real-world challenges of scaling systems with Microsoft Azure. From choosing the right architecture to optimizing performance and cost, I’ll be sharing insights drawn from experience and I’d love to hear yours too. Whether you're building from scratch, migrating legacy systems, or refining deployments, let’s talk about what actually works.Comparision on Azure Cloud Sync and Traditional Entra connect Sync.
Introduction In the evolving landscape of identity management, organizations face a critical decision when integrating their on-premises Active Directory (AD) with Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD). Two primary tools are available for this synchronization: Traditional Entra Connect Sync (formerly Azure AD Connect) Azure Cloud Sync While both serve the same fundamental purpose, bridging on-prem AD with cloud identity, they differ significantly in architecture, capabilities, and ideal use cases. Architecture & Setup Entra Connect Sync is a heavyweight solution. It installs a full synchronization engine on a Windows Server, often backed by SQL Server. This setup gives administrators deep control over sync rules, attribute flows, and filtering. Azure Cloud Sync, on the other hand, is lightweight. It uses a cloud-managed agent installed on-premises, removing the need for SQL Server or complex infrastructure. The agent communicates with Microsoft Entra ID, and most configurations are handled in the cloud portal. For organizations with complex hybrid setups (e.g., Exchange hybrid, device management), is Cloud Sync too limited?What Nonprofits Need to Know About Cloud Storage Redundancy
At the heart of this post is Kairos IMS, an innovative Impact Management System designed to empower human-serving nonprofits and social impact organizations. Co-developed by the Urban League of Broward County and our trusted technology partner, Impactful, Kairos IMS reduces administrative burdens, enhances holistic care, and enables organizations to leverage data for increased agility and seamless service delivery. In this blog series, we’ll take a closer look at the powerful technologies that fuel Kairos IMS, from Azure services to security frameworks, offering insight into how modern infrastructure supports mission-driven impact. Click here to learn more. What Is Azure Storage Redundancy? Azure storage redundancy refers to how your data is copied and stored across multiple physical locations to keep it safe and accessible—even if hardware fails or a data center goes offline. Think of it as creating backup copies in real-time, so if one server goes down, another one picks up right where it left off. Azure offers several redundancy options, each with a different level of protection and cost: Locally Redundant Storage (LRS): Data is replicated three times within a single data center. Great for budget-conscious orgs. Cheapest option. Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS): Data is stored across three different availability zones in the same region. Offers higher resilience. Mid-tier pricing. Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS): Data is copied to a secondary region hundreds of miles away. Ideal for disaster recovery. Higher cost. Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage (RA-GRS): Like GRS, but you can read from the secondary region even if the primary one is down. Why Redundancy Matters for Nonprofits Nonprofits are often targets of cyberattacks and also operate in environments where internet outages or power failures can occur. Redundancy ensures that: You don’t lose important grant or donor data. Services like SharePoint or hosted databases stay online. You can continue serving your community even in unexpected situations. Using Your $2,000 in Azure Credits Wisely Microsoft offers approved nonprofits $2,000 in Azure credits each year through its Microsoft for Nonprofits program. Here’s how you can use those credits for storage redundancy: Start small with LRS or ZRS for frequently used files or backups. Use GRS for mission-critical data like financial or compliance documents. Back up virtual machines or databases with geo-redundancy for restore-anywhere capabilities. Pair with Azure Backup or Site Recovery for additional resilience. Tip: Monitor your credit usage in the Azure Cost Management and Billing dashboard so you don’t overspend. Getting Started If your nonprofit already has an Azure subscription through Microsoft's grant, you're ready to go! Here’s what to do next: Log into the Azure portal with admin credentials. Navigate to Storage Accounts > + Create. Choose your region and desired redundancy level. Configure Advanced, Networking, Data protection, Encryption, and Tag settings and then select Review + create to go over your configuration. Select Create to make your storage account. Start uploading files or connecting services like Microsoft 365 or backup tools. If you’re unsure which redundancy level is right for your nonprofit, a good starting point is to use LRS for general storage and reserve GRS for the most critical data. Storage redundancy isn’t just a technical term—it’s peace of mind. With Azure and your nonprofit credits, you can build a more resilient and secure digital foundation without spending out of pocket. Not sure how to get started? Microsoft has nonprofit partners and tech support that can help you make the most of your credits. Your mission is too important to risk downtime—let’s make sure your data is always safe and accessible.Protect Azure Data Lake Storage with Vaulted Backups
We are thrilled to announce a limited public preview of vaulted backups for Azure Data Lake Storage. This is available now for test workloads and we’d like to get your feedback. Vaults are secure, encrypted copies of your data, enabling restoration to an alternate location in cases of accidental or malicious deletion. Vaulted backups are fully isolated from the source data, ensuring continuity for your business operations even in scenarios where the source data is compromised. This fully managed solution leverages the Azure Backup service to manage backups with automated retention and scheduling. By creating a backup policy, you can define a backup schedule and retention period. Based on this policy, Azure Backup service generates recovery points and manages the lifecycle of backups seamlessly. Ways vaulted backups protect your data: Isolation from Production Data – Vaulted backups are stored in a separate, Microsoft-managed tenant, preventing attackers from accessing both primary and backup data. Strict Access Controls – Backup management requires distinct permissions, ensuring segregation of duties and reducing insider threats. Advanced Security Features – With features like soft delete, immutability, and encryption, vaulted backups safeguard data against unauthorized modifications and premature deletions. Even if attackers compromise the primary storage account, backups remain secure within the vault, preserving data integrity and ensuring compliance. Alternate location recovery - Vaulted backups provide a reliable recovery solution by enabling restoration to an alternate storage account, ensuring business continuity even when the original account is inaccessible. Additionally, this capability allows organizations to create separate data copies for purposes such as testing, development, or analytics, without disrupting production environments. Granular recovery - With vaulted backups, you can restore the entire storage account or specific containers based on your needs. You can also use prefix matching to recover select blobs. With the growing frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks, protecting your data against loss or corruption is more critical than ever. Consider the following example use case where having vaulted backups can save the day. Enhanced Protection Against Ransomware Attacks Ransomware attacks can encrypt critical data, complicating recovery unless a ransom is paid. Vaulted backups offer an independent and secure recovery solution, allowing you to restore data without succumbing to attackers' demands. Accidental or Malicious Storage Account Deletion Human errors, insider threats, or compromised credentials can result in the deletion of entire storage accounts. Vaulted backups provide a crucial layer of protection by storing backups in Microsoft-managed storage, independent of your primary storage account. This ensures that an additional copy of your data remains intact, even if the original storage account is accidentally or maliciously deleted. Compliance Regulations Certain industries mandate offsite backups and long-term data retention to meet regulatory standards. Vaulted backups enable organizations to comply by offering offsite backup storage within the same Azure region as the primary storage account. With vaulted backups, data can be retained for up to 10 years. Getting started To enroll in the preview fill out this form. For more details, refer to this article. Vaulted backups can be configured for block blobs within HNS-enabled, standard general-purpose v2 ADLS storage accounts in specified regions here. Support for additional regions will be added incrementally. Currently, this preview is recommended exclusively for testing purposes. The Azure Backup protected instance fee and the vault backup storage fees are not currently charged. Now is a great time to give vaulted backups a try! Contact us If you have questions or feedback, please reach out to us at AskAzureBackupTeam@microsoft.com.General Availability: Vaulted backup for Azure Files - Boost your data security and compliance
We are thrilled to announce the General Availability (GA) of Vaulted Backup support in Azure Backup for Azure files - Standard tier to help seamlessly protect your data and applications hosted on Azure file share. With this release, you can now leverage vaulted backup integration to protect Standard SMB file shares. Azure Backup vaulted support for Azure file share provides enhanced data protection with the ability to configure snapshot and vaulted backup in a single policy to a secure backup location(Recovery Services vault) and support regional recovery. Vaulted backup provides advanced protection capabilities like ransomware protection, ability to restore even when file share is deleted which are missing with snapshot only backup. Vaulted backup solution seamlessly integrates with Azure File sync allowing File sync customers to protect data tiered to the cloud long-term in a cost-effective manner. In this blog post let’s explore how Azure Backup can enable robust data protection solution for businesses migrating and hosting applications on Azure file share. Security: Protection against Ransomware Ransomware or malware attack, continues to be a major threat to organizations worldwide, often leaving businesses at the mercy of cybercriminals demanding hefty ransom payments in exchange for access to their encrypted data. Vaulted backups provide a vital line of defense, ensuring that organizations can recover their data without giving in to ransom demands. Key features offered by vaulted Backups which protects against Ransomware: Isolation: Vaulted Backup data is isolated from your production storage accounts and stored in a separate tenant managed by Microsoft. This isolation helps safeguard your data against unauthorized tampering and ensures that your backups remain intact. Advanced security: Features like vault lock, multi-user authorization, and soft delete, which add additional layers of protection, ensuring that backups are immune to malicious deletion or tampering. Governance and security posture: Azure Backup integrates with the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) security posture, allowing you to better manage and govern the security of your backups. This ensures that your backups meet the right level of protection and are recoverable when you need them most. Regulatory and compliance Azure File share enables users from industries like legal, finance, and health to store crucial business data. To comply with regulations and compliance checks, one will require offsite backups with long-term retention, which snapshots alone couldn't provide. With vaulted backup users can move snapshots to a Recovery Services Vault in the same Azure region as their primary storage, with options for cross-regional replication. This setup allows backup data to be retained for up to 99 years in low-cost, highly secure, immutable storage, meeting regulatory and compliance requirements during audits and legal holds. Furthermore, with the introduction of the new cross-subscription backup capability, organizations can allocate backup data to dedicated subscriptions. This feature allows customers to consolidate all backups into a single subscription, enhancing cost management and ensuring independent access control. It enables organizations to retain control over their data protection strategy while ensuring that each department or project adheres to its specific regulatory and security requirements. Enterprise Ready Vaulted backup support now enables adherence to the widely accepted 3-2-1 backup rule for Azure files protection. Azure Backup is well integrated with Azure Business Continuity Center that can offer centralized management to gain visibility, monitor jobs, alerts and reporting. How does 3-2-1 backup help? Human errors, insider threats, or stolen credentials can lead to critical data loss. File share snapshots serve as the first line of defense to restore your data. In case, where snapshots are not available, Vaulted Backups, stored securely outside of your primary storage account, provide an additional protected copy of your data. Additionally, the copy of the backup can be replicated to another region using GRS Geo-Redundant storage. A backup policy will enable you to manage the schedule and retention for both snapshots and vault copies. In the event of deletion whether accidental or malicious the restore process will first be initiated using snapshots. If snapshots are unavailable, recovery will proceed from the vault. If the primary region is down then one can restore from the secondary region with Cross Region restore option Getting started Here are three simple steps to help you get started with configuring vaulted backup for Azure File shares: Create a Recovery services vault: A vault is a management entity that stores backups and allows you to access and manage them. Create a backup policy: Backup policy enables you to configure the frequency and retention of backups based on your business requirements. Select the storage account and File shares to backup: You can choose to back up all File share or select specific File shares from the selected storage account depending on the criticality of the data they contain. Learn more about vaulted backup for File share here. Pricing and availability Vaulted backup for Azure File share standard is generally available in these regions. Vaulted backup for premium file shares will continue to be in public preview. You will incur a protected instance fee and charges for backup storage for both standard and premium shares from 1 st April 2025. To learn about pricing, refer to the Azure File share backup pricing page. Contact us If you have questions or feedback, please reach out to us at AskAzureBackupTeam@microsoft.com.
